


Alone in the Dark

by Viridian5



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst, Drama, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1998-07-07
Updated: 1998-07-07
Packaged: 2017-10-02 09:11:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Viridian5/pseuds/Viridian5
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A brooding Mulder thinks about his relationship with Alex and comes to some conclusions.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Alone in the Dark

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for "The Pine Bluff Variant;" nothing from _X-Files: Fight the Future_ that any X-fan couldn't guess would happen.
> 
> Thanks to Te and Alicia, betas supreme. This may be one of the bleakest things I've ever written.

So here I am, sitting alone in the dark. Again. I shouldn't do this; I know it's not good for me.

Since when have I done what's good for me?

I saw a news report on a man who had a memory like mine. He remembered everything: events, sights, smells, sounds. Every day he would write down the memories he didn't want to keep on a piece of paper, then burn it. His version of a delete function. That supposedly worked for him.

Desperate, I tried it. It failed with me. Maybe I've had my memories edited by others so many times that my subconscious won't let me chop anything myself. Maybe I just can't let go of my pain. There have been so many times in my life when it was the only thing I had.

I should be elated. The X-Files are open again. Scully is staying with me even after I begged her to leave for her own good. The powers that be aren't going to separate us after all. My faith in the existence of extraterrestrial life has been restored, in a big way. Most of the torments that had built up in my life have been taken away, or at least lessened.

Now I only have one thing nagging me. It's enough.

It's like being seriously ill for a very long time, the kind of sickness where the pain is so constant that you learn to be thankful for the periods of less agony. The kind that makes you stop caring about anything, numb. And then, after you finally fight off the sickness you realize that, sometime while you were ill, you had cut your foot, and the wound had started to go bad. You never noticed it, because it was only one pain among many others. Now gangrene is traveling up your leg, causing a new kind of agony.

If you don't amputate soon, you may die.

I've seen Alex a lot lately after months of sporadic appearances and long absences alleviated only somewhat by e-mail messages and phone calls from out of the blue. Sometimes I would hear, "Mulder, it's me," from my cell phone. Scully's words but his voice.

He was so good to me in the beginning, so unexpectedly kind and patient during some of the roughest months of my life, even if I did find it disquieting how much he liked that finger splint I wore for a while. I've never known another person who could be so witty, charming, and sexy. He even showed an occasional streak of goofiness I found endearing.

The sex is still great, but everything else has gone to hell, and it's like the sun has gone away. He's broken so many promises to me that I only half-listen to any new ones he makes. I expect nothing from him. We don't talk at all anymore. Not together. Not in a way that doesn't involve the two of us trying to hurt one another. Me talking in a conciliatory way and him pretending to listen doesn't count. When he looks me straight in the eye I don't see anyone home in there. His body is standing in front of me, but his mind and heart won't grace me with their presence.

We don't throw one another around anymore, but he uses words that hurt me more than anything else he could have done. He never yells back. I wish he would; it would show me he cared. Instead he just goes dark, sharp, and cold, so cold that I never even realize how badly I'm hurt until the bleeding starts.

_//"I'm not going to stop working to please you. I don't approve of what you do for a living, but I never say anything.//_ You just did.

_//"When I'm in the middle of something important, you can't interrupt me. I don't interrupt you."//_ Which, from Alex, translated to: "Go away until I want you for something."

Something important. Maybe, but I'm not lying and killing my way around the world. Who else are you lying to, Alex?

Who else are you lying _with_?

I knew what he was when I started this with him. He'd already betrayed me, helped the Consortium steal and hurt Scully, killed my father, helped kill her sister. But he strikes me like a madness, and I let myself drown in the pleasure, the danger, the risk. For the first month I let myself bask in the warmth of his attention, now withheld. Let myself stop thinking and start feeling. He was the only one who noticed my deepening pain and thought to ask me about it. No one touches me like he does....

I know he has others. I try not to ask myself how many. Try not to let myself wonder if sex is a biological imperative for him, like taking a shit. You don't get too attached to your toilet.

_//"You know how I feel about you, so why do I have to keep saying it?"//_ Translation: "It's not my fault you're a needy lunatic."

I thought I could change him. If I made him happy, offered him a home, he wouldn't have to do the things he did anymore. He would settle down with me, and we would be happy together. I would never be alone again.

When did I become my mother?

_//"People can only hurt you if you let them."//_ Translation: "It's all your fault." And it's so hard not to believe him....

He's been here a lot lately, and I can tell by his body language that he did something I would hate him for if I found out about it. Something that would hurt me, that may already be hurting me. I know him well enough to know that, even if no one else could tell.

_//"Don't be such a martyr, Mulder. No one asks you to."//_ That needs no translation.

Recently I smelled cigarette smoke on him. Morley's. As far as anyone knows, Cancer Man is dead.

But so was Alex after his alien possession....

I hear someone at the door and the lock turning, which make me reach for the gun I keep hidden under the pillow. From the slow and careful way the person outside is picking the lock, I know it's Alex. I never gave him an apartment key. Why bother?

I don't put the gun away. With infinite patience I wait for him to open the door.

 

### End


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